


like a burning pyre

by unlikelyfaces



Category: Tomboy (Comics 2015)
Genre: Character Study, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-04 23:12:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16798948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unlikelyfaces/pseuds/unlikelyfaces
Summary: You cannot stay human — stay pure — when you swear to stain the Earth with the blood of the people who have taken your joy and your peace of mind.





	like a burning pyre

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry fraise 💖

In her dreams, there's a world where the things that happen did not.

Where she's seven years old again and sitting in the Garden of Eden. Elena weaves red flowers into her hair and Irene ties pieces of yarn to both their pinkies, connecting them for the rest of time. Their parents sit, mere feet away, and they laugh and smile as their daughters strengthen a bond stronger than death itself.

The Branch never comes, and if they do, they’re stopped before their movement can get any real traction.

Irene grows up with the love and support of her mother and father, her best friend at her side the entire time. Elena comes to her gifts before her, but that is not a surprise; Elena has always been smart, strong in the ways that matter, and it’s only natural that she go first. Irene’s doesn’t learn how to start pulling the strings of fate until she’s fifteen, soon to be sixteen — but even when she does, it does not matter. She has everything she wants, everything she needs. She does not need to manipulate the universe to get her happy ending.

When she’s twenty three, she and Elena go their own way. They travel to America, of all places, because they’re young and eager to discover what the world has to offer. There are more of their kind, there. Irene meets a couple not unlike herself, with warm and welcoming smiles. They hold a sniffling little bundle in their arms. 

When her finger wraps around the golden thread that connects her to the child that sleeps soundly in his mother’s arms, she smiles.

She has Elena at her side when his parents die, an unavoidable fate. When she offers to take care of the innocent orphan, nobody bats an eye, and so she whisks him away to raise her in her home, with the people that she loves so dearly.

None of them ever step foot in Rivergrove.

They don't have to. 

/

In her dreams, Irene forgets that she is supposed to be heartless.

But dreams are both a blessing and a curse. 

A blessing because she can remember, vividly, what it meant to be happy once.

A curse because she'll never again feel it in her life. 

/

In the real world, the one that matters, Irene Trent has long since forgotten the stories of make-believe and fairytales. She has seen the cruelty of life far too often to believe that there is anything such as a happily ever after. The hero does not always save their loved one, the villain does not always die a horrible and deserving death. 

In the real world, cruelty for the sake of cruelty often wins.

/

Irene Trent does not make a deal with the devil. 

Her entire life ripped away from her, everyone she ever cared about dead, but that is her own problem to deal with. She does not summon some horned, red-skinned little demon and ask him for a favor in exchange for her soul. She does not trade her humanity for the pleasure that revenge will give her.

Irene Trent stains her  _ own _ hands with blood. She knows she’ll never be able to survive a world without love, without her heart, if she does not have a purpose — so she makes one for herself. She sacrifices her peace of mind, the softness of her flesh, and her soul to a cause that is of her own making.

Her deal with herself, no demons in the footnotes of her story. 

She becomes her own devil, her own damnation.

She tells herself: if she cannot be happy, then what gives  _ them  _ — the monsters that took  _ everything _ away — any right?

/

Before she fully understands what she's doing, they’re dropping like flies, one by one. It’s all her doing, and she seldom regrets a life taken in those days. 

Irene learns the taste of copper in her mouth — blood, her own and that of those who were not lucky enough to avoid her wrath. She carves her way through the Branch’s operatives with nothing but a knife, a pretty smile, and a box of cigarettes. 

She collects lighters like trophies. Buys one for each kill until there’s a boxful of them in the back of her car, and she’s got more of them than she knows what to do with hem. Then, she takes each and every one of them and dumps them over the body of her next target — watches from across the street as they catch fire and destroy everything around them.

Sloppy, maybe, but any threads that connect her to the crimes are quickly severed. She cannot be stopped, she cannot be hindered by anyone who thinks they have a right to prevent her wrath. 

Irene learns to hear the sounds of people praying for their lives, and to ignore the feeling of guilt that festers in her gut until it is barely a dull echo in the tapestry of the larger scheme of things.

/

“Is it worth it?” Someone always asks, when she sleeps and she dreams of a life that she could not have.

When it is her father, she can’t help but falter. In him, she can see where her own reflection gets most of its features, and the crow’s feet around his eyes that had just barely begun to form when he was taken from her. He smiles at her, oh so softly, looking so much like the proud yet kind man who tried to raise her right.

Still, there’s a gaping hole in his chest. Try as she might, she cannot look away from what has become of him, what has become of her bloody past.

“You’ve destroyed yourself, my darling,” he’ll say, pitying. “You’ve destroyed yourself for us. For what? For vengeance?”

Irene cannot swallow the pain when she sees him. She reaches out, desperate to grab onto him one last, fleeting moment, but he is nothing but mist against her fingers. A fleeting memory, all that remains is a broken heart.

“I don’t know,” she’ll say in response, and she squeezes her eyes shut until she can’t see him anymore. “ _ I don’t know.” _ Until she’s gasping awake, arms wrapping around herself and trying to bury the vivid nightmares.

By morning, when she's once again behind the wheel of her car and driving to her next destination, her next target, they're nothing but fragments in an already broken mind.

/

Owen is a light she did not think she would find, and when she holds him in his arms, rocks him after finding him in the pantry, it is the first time in so long that she remembers being able to genuinely smile. 

He sleeps soundly against her chest as she carries him away from the gruesome sight of his now deceased family, only briefly wakes up when she stops by the nearest baby store to buy a seat for him in her car. Then, he sleeps until they’re about five towns over from his own, where she pulls up into a motel and watches him, contemplative.

When he awakes, rather than cry — as she half expected him to — he stares at her with big, round eyes, blinking blearily. Irene does not break eye contact, if only because she doesn’t know a thing about children but everything about asserting dominance.

She’s an incompetent fool, she realizes, when the child only gurgles happily after a few moments and holds his arms out to her, asking to be lifted up into her grasp.

It is with him that she is reminded that there are still things in this world that are worth protecting. 

Love. 

Precious life. 

Children.

/

A memory fleeting. A blond man in a uniform, vines wrapped around his body. 

She sits among the remnants of people she once knew as family, friends, and people who were supposed to be loyal.

She pretends to be dead, and the hiccuping breaths accompanied by sobs forced to subside if she has any chance of slipping past the branch members undetected. 

They cut him from the warm embrace of Elena's own making. 

They don't kill him. 

Her own voice echoes in her mind, promising,  _ this is not the end. _

_ This is not our end. _

/

Remembering is easy, and a decision is not hard to make. 

There’s still hope. Not for her, and not for the people that have already been lost, but hope for their future. Hope to find the way to destroy the Branch once and for all.

She’ll bring Elena back, if not in body then in memory. 

In the man infected with Elena's gifts, in her best friend’s child.

/

“Is it worth it?” 

This time, it’s Elena who haunts her nightmares. In her face, usually bright eyes clouded in darkness, Irene sees pity — but then, there is always pity. Irene reaches out to touch her, half-expecting for her hand to go through the girl as it so often does with all of the others.

Instead, it lands on her cheek, solid. Shaking hands curl against the soft skin of the young girl’s face, strands of golden hair brushing against Irene’s pulse. Elena’s hands wraps over her own, a gentle caress. 

“I don’t know,” Irene repeats. She never has a different answer in these nightmares.

Elena frowns, she pulls Irene’s hand from her cheek — presses it to her heart. “Why do you do so much for me?”

Irene swallows, doesn’t let herself cry in her dreams. “You know why.” 

“I suppose I do,” Elena says, shaking her head solemnly. “You can’t raise the child, Irene.”

For a moment, Irene allows all of her insecurities to float to the surface. She knows she cannot, she does not say, but she understands it nonetheless. Still, she is stubborn, and so very lonely. “He’s one of my own. I can’t leave him.”

“He’ll get hurt, Irene.” She’s still a child in Irene's mind, but she speaks as if she were thousands of years wiser than Irene herself. “If you’re so intent on raising this child, on carrying on this suicide mission against the Branch, you must know he’ll get hurt.”

Irene knows this, too. She knows the likeliness of them both surviving unscathed, but she also knows that Owen has found a place in her heart. She knows she will do anything in her power to keep him safe, damned be the consequences. 

“I can protect him.” She knows she can, she  _ has  _ to.

Laughter, born from sadness, leaves her once best friend’s lips. “There are some things even meddling with fate can’t prevent.”

/

It takes a year, maybe a few months more, for the strings of fate to lead her to the person she’s looking for.

Anthony Brody, she learns quickly enough, will not give her what she is looking for. A man of action, the very offspring of her beloved friend, used against everything they believed in. 

It makes her stomach sick, knowing that this man once considered himself good friends with members of the Branch. He does not know or understand the power that he holds within him, what he has allowed himself to do against what is now his own people, but she suspects that he never will.

The strings of fate do not tie him to her.

His son, on the other hand? That is a different story.

/

As far as Irene’s aware, there's nothing particularly extraordinary about Mark Brody. 

He’s the type of man you’d pass by on a busy sidewalk and not bother with a second glance. He looks a lot like his father, and maybe too much like his mother. There’s a softness in his gaze, and a kindness he shares with everyone around him.

Even in his deepest moments of grief, he doesn’t treat anyone any crueler than they deserve for it; and there is… a lot of grief. 

Irene almost respects him for it.

Amongst building her skyscrapers and her warehouses — making an empire within Rivergrove — she finds herself pulling at the strings that bind their futures together, looking to see where they’ll lead them.

There’s a moment in their future, just one, that peaks her interests, and she follows that thread to sate her own selfish curiosity, if nothing else.

/

In the middle of a busy pediatrician’s office, both of them with children in their company, Irene Trent meets Mark Brody or the first time.

It’s quiet in the waiting room, the only sounds other waiting parents trying to keep the attention of their children.

One little girl cries in the corner of the room, despite her mother’s insistent shushing. Irene only barely resist the urge to snap at the woman who does a barely passable job of quitting her daughter.

Sitting only two chairs over from her, Mark Brody makes a valiant attempt at filling out some paperwork while keeping his daughter securely in his grasp.

He doesn’t have a pen either, but he’s yet to figure that out.

On the chair to her other side, Owen plays with his new toy — the same pen Irene had used to fill out the information only minutes earlier. 

Mark makes a half-frustrated sound when he finally realizes what he’s missing, and never had to begin with while Owen giggles in joy.

It’s almost an impossible feat to keep the grin from slipping onto her carefully neutral face.

“Excuse me,” Mark calls to her, after a long moment of consideration. “You wouldn’t happen to have a pen, would you?”

Wordlessly, Irene pulls out a pen from her purse and hands it out to him. She makes sure their fingers brush as he’s taking it from her grasp.

Watching him make an effort to write on a clipboard while carrying an infant is amusing in itself, but after a few minutes of watching the struggle silently, Irene chuckles and directs her attention fully to the man who should, by all counts, be a stranger.

“Would you like me to hold her for a moment?”

Mark pauses in his attempts, glancing up at Irene with something akin to hope in his eyes. “Please, if you could.”

The girl weighs almost nothing in he grasp, bundled up in a blanket to shield from the unforgiving cold outside. She’s tiny, tinier than Owen, but seems just as fragile as he always has.

Despite the jostling, being carried by her multitasking father, the child lies soundly asleep, unaware of the world around her. 

Irene looks down at the bundle in her arms with a smile. “What’s her name?”

She knows the girl’s name, of course. She knows everything about the Brody’s, but it never hurts to make conversation with the target of your interests.

“Addison,” Mark hums absentmindedly, his attention with the forms he’s filling.

“She’s cute,” Irene says, almost too casual. “You and your wife must be very proud.”

The sounds of pen scratching pause, but Mark takes a moment longer before responding.

“She… uh,” he lets out a breath. “She would be, if she were still with us. She passed away at childbirth.”

Irene feigns dismay at the news. It’s almost genuine. “Oh I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

“It’s okay,” Mark assures lightly. “Most people don’t.”

After clearing her throat, Irene speaks again, softer. “Well, nonetheless, she’s a beautiful child.” A teasing grin overtakes her face. “Almost as beautiful as my Owen.”

Mark snorts, amused. He glances at the child in question, who claps his hands excitedly as both sets of eyes land on him. Owen is, somehow, still holding the pen throughout all of this.

“Is that—” Mark begins, eyes glancing up at the pen thief’s mother.

As fate would have it, in that particular moment, the door to the doctor’s office is pushed open by a man in scrubs. “Mr. Brody?”

Mark jumps to his feet immediately, faltering before taking Addison from Irene’s hands. 

“Thank you,” he tells her. “For, you know, holding Addison.”

“It’s no problem,” Irene assures. She grins as she waves goodbye at little Addison, who’s only barely blinking awake. 

/

Rather than give to Rivergrove, Irene takes.

First, she takes the people’s loyalty. She uses the money her parents left her, and the money she stole from those monsters, and she puts it into her legacy. The buildings created, the businesses made, she fills with people who she doesn’t necessarily trust, but whom she knows will stay if only for the money that it gets them.

The safety she needs, the assurances, she buys. She buys everything, actually. There isn’t a single person she can’t somehow bribe into helping her in whatever way she requires, and that makes it all the more easy. 

Then, she takes their safety. She works, and she works, leaving no stone unturned in her efforts to find a way to do what Elena would have wanted her to — until the city is dripping with potential, and crawling with the building blocks of an army that’s much needed.

Irene loses track of how many times her plan fails, how much effort goes into it, how much money spent. But the goal is one, and the results will ultimately be worth it.

The public has no idea, and how could they? Nobody save for the Elder Branch, and those who run from them in fear, understand the truth of the power they wield.

It’s just as well. If anyone knew, Irene wouldn’t be successful. 

If anyone knew, they’d try to stop her.

There’s enough blood on Irene’s hands for the moment.

/

She meets Mark Brody for the second time on a trip to the grocery store. 

It’s been three months since their encounter at the pediatrician, and — if she’s being entirely honest with herself — Irene had completely placed him in the back of her mind.

For now, he was unimportant in her plans, and the knowledge that he showed no signs of an affliction had done nothing to encourage her to pursue him further. He was, truly, just a man with a daughter, who happened to be the son of a very interesting man to Irene.

Irene sees him grabbing a box of cereal, the kind that contains too much sugar to be healthy, and drop it onto his basket absentmindedly. She doesn’t think twice about it, goes back to minding her own business and pretending that she’s just a normal woman out for a late night grocery run.

It’s not until Irene’s reaching for her preferred brand of coffee, on a shelf just a bit too far out of reach for her, that she catches Mark’s attention.

“Let me help you with that,” Mark offers, kind as ever.

Irene huffs, but she moves aside so he can grab it for her. 

He holds out the can for her, and Irene’s almost got it in her grasp before the man’s eyes light up in recognition. “You’re the woman from the Doctor’s office, aren’t you? The little pen thief’s mom?”

She rolls her eyes, but her lips quirk up in a smile at the title. “Irene. Yes, the little thief is my son.”

“Irene.” Mark smiles, then laughs nervously. “I’m sorry, here I am talking about pen thieves, and I forgot to give yours back. I’m, uh, I’m Mark. Mark Brody.”

A moment of silence passes between them, Irene’s eyes gaze over him, assessing. Then, she takes the coffee and places it in her basket before returning her hand for him to shake. “It’s nice to officially meet you, Mark. Please, don’t worry about the pen, I can afford more.”

She means it as a joke. She doesn’t mention that she could afford a billion more if she so desired, or that a pen was just the beginning of a means to an end for her. Irene has known Mark Brody for all of a few minutes shared between them, but she doesn’t wish to be unkind to him.

“Thank you for Addison, too.” Mark shakes her hand in a strong, confident grip. “I’m not used to this whole thing. I’d have brought her carrier, but I’d just gotten out of work and I was rushing it make it to our appointment, and it didn’t occur to me that I’d need it until I was standing there.”

Mark was a talker, it seemed. 

It wasn’t to say that Irene was surprised, though it was a change of pace for her — she wasn’t used to people wanting to hold a conversation with her for the sake of conversing, usually there was an ulterior motive.

“Being a new parent takes getting used to.” Irene holds her basket with both hands, shrugging. “I’m still getting used to it too, and I’ve been at it for a few more months than you.”

“You look like you’re doing pretty well,” Mark compliments. “At least, unless you did bring your son along and forgot him in the car. In which case, I’m worried for you.”

Irene laughs. It’s a bad joke, but there’s something about Mark’s cheerful tone that’s infectious. “He’s with the babysitter, but thank you. For what it’s worth, I’m sure you’re doing amazing as well — unless the cereal’s for her, in which case, isn’t she a bit too young?”

Mark grins, full and beaming as he glances down at his own basket. “No. Ah, that’s mine. I’ve got a bit of a sweet tooth. My dad says I’m too old for this kind of thing, but I can’t stop eating it.”

“Well, I think your father is wrong,” Irene grins back at him. “It’s not killing you yet, right?”

“That’s exactly what I said!” 

There’s a glance behind him, then at his watch. Mark falters, almost as if remembering he’s in some kind of hurry. Irene glances at her own watch, and realizes that she too needs to be home before the babysitter has to go. 

“It was nice to see you, Mark, but I have to go.” Irene shifts her weight from one leg to another, high heel clicking against the tiled floor. 

This time, Mark is the one to wave her goodbye.

Irene wishes she could say that she didn’t smile all the way home, but then she’d be lying to herself too.

She’s lying to enough people as it is.

/

There’s a third time, when she and her lawyers are getting some things sorted out about zoning and construction.

She turns a corner and none other than Mark Brody is there, leaning against a banister and talking to some redhead lawyer type. 

They don’t see each other for more than a few moments, both of them busy in their own worlds, but when he looks up and meets eyes with her, he smiles so blinding and bright as he waves at a woman he’s only met twice before.

Irene thinks, maybe, perhaps, it’s time she start lying to herself.

/

Another encounter in the grocery store, and somehow she walks out of there having exchanged phone numbers with the man.

Irene doesn’t know who Fortuna is playing with; him, or herself.

/

The first date is awkward.

Mark is, unsurprisingly, a gentleman. He does the right things, says the right things, but under it all there is still the underlying knowledge that none of this is necessarily real to Irene.

He’s a good man, yes, but he’s also the son of Elena’s blood child, and therefore a point of interest for Irene to pursue.

Irene has never been on a date before purely for the enjoyment of it, and more often than not her dates ended with the other party deceased. 

She doesn’t want to see Mark as one of those dates — he isn’t one of those targets, not necessarily. But she can’t see it as something pure, either, because it isn’t. There is still something selfish about the ordeal, something less to do with herself and everything to do with Elena.

He’s kind, and he’s talkative. He opens the car door for her and he holds the restaurant door for her and he pulls her chair out for her. He compliments her on her dress, and on her hair, and he blushes whenever she tells him he looks handsome.

Still, Irene  _ can’t  _ forget. 

She doesn’t allow herself to forget.

/

Mark brings her a single flower when he comes to pick her up for the next one. A single, golden flower that he presents to her as she opens her door.

Irene knows there’s no possible way he could understand the importance of the flower, but something in her heart softens when she holds it in her grasp. 

“It’s not too much, is it?” he asks, nervously.

Irene shakes her head, laughing tenderly. “It’s perfect.”

/

“You’re playing with fire,” Iris tells her, when she finally tracks her down.

It’s a chilly afternoon. The leaves fall from trees, signaling the turn of the season. 

Irene sits on a park bench, a cup of coffee in between curled fists in front of her as she ignores the woman sitting only mere feet away from her. 

Anger and righteousness rolls off the other woman in waves, and Irene wonders, not for the first time, if Fortuna intends to complicate all of Irene’s plans so easily. Of all towns, a powerful Shadow Bell had to be found on the same town as Elena’s offspring?

It seemed too much like fate was playing all of them.

Irene huffs, clicking her tongue. “I don’t know what you’re referring to, dear Iris.”

There’s a moment, long and considering. Irene can feel the other woman’s gaze fall heavily on herself, assessing the situation that they’ve found themselves in.

Whatever she’s searching for, Iris must not find it, because she shakes her head — a soft chuckle escaping her lips as she leans back on her seat. She takes the other coffee sitting in the holder between them, the one Irene brought, knowing well that she’d have this encounter today. 

“You’ve gotten older,” Iris comments.

“People tend to do that.”

Another chuckle. “You look good.”

“I’m alive because of you.” Irene takes a sip of her drink, casual as all hell. “You saved me when you, yourself, still understood very little of what had become of you. I’m grateful.”

Iris nods. “Don’t make me regret it, Irene.”

Blinking innocently, Irene turns her head to gaze at her. “Whatever do you mean by that?”

“Mark Brody.” Iris sighs, looking tired but no less weary. “I don’t know what your game is, Irene. I don’t know what your plans with him are, but leave him be before you wrap him up in things he couldn’t possibly understand. He’s not like us, he doesn’t carry the affliction.”

“Or so you say,” Irene answers, but she knows Iris is being truthful of the situation. 

Mark is human, and nothing more. He’s entirely ordinary.

Iris sits up straighter. “Don’t make me have to rectify a mistake, Irene. Stop whatever you’re planning before I have to intervene.”

Irene humms noncommittally, but laughs after a moment. “It’s just a few dates, Iris. Don’t get so riled up, I’ll get bored with him soon.”

/

Iris’ warning rings in her mind when she meets up with Mark the following day for lunch.

For all that she can’t help but think that the words come from paranoia and a deep seeded desire to keep things as balanced as possible to continue living underneath the Branch’s radar, Irene knows that there is much to be said about the honesty of the Shadow Bell’s words.

Mark may be the son of Anthony Brody, and someone with a strong bloodline with the chance of breeding future children of the Scarlet Wing.

If he were Afflicted, it would be different. Perhaps then Irene would be able to say that she was keeping his company for a reason, for more than just fondness and the desire to see where things lead them.

But he isn’t.

Ultimately, Mark Brody is just a man; a kind, uninvolved,  _ human _ man.

A human man with a child to take care of, with a dead wife, and with enough of the world against him.

He doesn’t need Irene’s brand of trouble creeping into his life.

/

It takes two weeks of deliberating.

There are a dozen missed calls, twice as many unopened messages. Once, a man brings her a bouquet of flowers and Irene can’t bare to look at them for more than a moment before asking that they be sent back.

She tells herself that she has too much to do in very little time, that seeking someone else’s affection would just hinder her plans, add a weakness to herself that she does not already possess. According to her, through sufficient denial, her motives are entirely selfish and therefore justified.

Irene takes the threads connecting herself to Mark Brody, every single possibility of a future with him in her life, the moments they could have shared with one another — living in the company of another, happy with the presence of one another. 

She snaps each thread between them, until the only one connecting them is the messy, tangled thread that connects her to the Brody family’s bloodline for Elena.

And then, she forces herself to forget.

/

Board meetings and conferences blend together until Irene doesn’t have the patience to deal with much of it. She hires more people, looks for the threads that securely tie her to the types of characters that would do anything for the right price.

Somewhere along the line, those threads lead her to Mikolas.

Though he’s a good man, there is a shadow in his life that will not allow him to be free.

Irene has fed off of the idea of revenge for as long as she can remember, and when she sees the face of an angry and grieving man in the files of the Detective, a good person at the end of their rope who needs a break, some kind of lifeline to pull him out of the gutters.

For what it’s worth, Irene thinks the head of his Number One Enemy on a platter works just as well as any kind of lifeline. She even does most of the dirty work herself in that one; makes sure that De Luca suffers as much as he deserves to for a man that’s ruined countless lives for his own selfish gain.

She makes sure, when his final moment finally comes, there’s fear in his eyes.

And then, to Mikolas, she throws a particularly high salary in for good measure.

/

“Don’t you feel pity for them?” her mother asks in her dreams once.

There is so little about her that Irene remembers now, only the things she can garner from pictures that remain. 

Her face is clear but unfamiliar, blonde hair framing her face perfectly, not a strand out of place. Dark rouge painted lips pulled in a disappointed frown. As always, she’s dressed in the finest silks and garments.

Of all the things she cannot remember, the one Irene knows is that her mother was always beautiful. 

“Why should I feel sorry for them?” Irene asks, unbothered. “They would not feel sorry for me.”

“My beautiful girl.” There is a sadness in her mother’s tone. Irene knows it is her own mind picturing things she wants to see, and not the reality — her mother had never let her own sadness show, she’d seldom ever let any emotion leak through that wasn’t proper and controlled. “You have wasted your life away, and for what? A girl you knew in childhood? A legacy that ended with you and her?”

Irene shuts her eyes tightly, rubbing at them as the tears fight their way to the surface. “I can save us, mother. I can save our legacy. It isn’t over yet.”

“It was over for you the moment you choose this path, my sweet girl.”

Her mother’s voice grows fainter, until Irene can no longer feel the cold and unforgiving embrace wrapped around her skin.

/

She raises Owen the way she thinks she’d have liked to raise her own child, her own blood. Without the intervention of what it is that taints her past, and her future. 

Owen will never know, she decides early on, of what Irene has had to sacrifice and the people she had to hurt to get to where she’s going.

Irene hopes that there never comes a day when Owen will discover the monster that his mother truly is, but in the event that she does, she ensures that he’ll never have any ties to it. His innocence will remain, if nothing else can. 

Should the day ever come when Owen himself is one of the Afflicted, Irene will deal with it, but she prays for that day to come much later, if it ever comes at all.

Her angel, her soft boy, does not deserve to know of the tragedies that plagued his birth.

Owen deserves to have the chance to live for himself.

/

If there is one thing Irene did not expect, it is that Rivergrove would prove to be such a small area for one to cast their net. 

Threads weave together, tying themselves in knots. 

People meet other people, they become friends, they become enemies, and they become targets and collateral.

They bring trouble, and they bring grief.

/

It never occurred to her before that she’d have to kill her own child’s friends, or their parents, for that matter.

But some secrets are too important to be set loose over something as trivial as sentimentality.

She isn't sorry. 

/

There is innocent blood that stains Irene’s hands, and blood that will never be washed from her soul.

Irene knew when she began her mission that it would end with her making a monster of herself. She knew humanity was not something she would be able to cling to. She was not sure she was ever human to begin with, though she swears that she must have been, once, in her youth.

But you cannot stay human, stay pure, when you swear to stain the Earth with the blood of the people who have taken your joy and your peace of mind.

/

“Was it worth it?” Someone asks again, in her dreams.

Her mother and father, and even Elena, have been silent in her subconscious for a long time. It has been years since she woke up, gasping their names and reaching out for something unattainable. 

They have not returned.

This time, it is her own son in her thoughts, vibrant and alive as he’s always been.

His fingers tap softly over piano keys and when Irene sits next to him on the bench, she can smell the strawberries of his favorite shampoo as she holds him close and buries her face on the crook of his neck.

He doesn’t move, keeps playing slowly as if Irene isn’t there to begin with.

Irene realizes, suddenly, that in this dream, she is the ghost and he is the one left to grieve all alone.

She cannot help but cry as she clings to him as if her life depends on it, grasping for something that she cannot keep holding onto. 

She weeps for herself, and for Owen, and for everything that he’ll have to endure when she’s done. 

“I need to believe that it will be.”

/

Outside of her dreams, Irene does not allow herself to cry anymore.

She has cried enough, in her childhood, and in her youth. She cried when her parents were killed, and she cried when she lost Elena. She cried when she first knew that her heart would not know peace until she ended the lives of every single person whom had taken part in taking everything away from her.

She cried when she knew that, inevitably, raising Owen would mean that she’d never be able to fully protect him from what would one day come.

She doesn’t allow herself to feel grief, or guilt outside of her dreams either.

They are useless feelings in the endeavors of monsters, and if she wants to be successful then she needs to remember that the blood she spills is not the first innocent blood to be lost, and for the Branch to continue undeterred, it will not be the last either.

Irene continues in her mission, and she yearns for the ending that will come soon.

/

Mikolas’ death feels like the beginning of the end. 

There are still too many missing variables, too much of the puzzle that is yet unknown to her.

Irene sees the body of her most trusted enforcer, gaping wound in his chest as she stands among the ashes of one of her warehouses, and she knows that things have gone wrong in more ways than she could have possibly anticipated.

She sits, arms crossed in an interrogation room as the Detective drones on and on about her speculations, and though she may be right, Irene is more than well aware that there’s not enough proof to hold her accountable for anything.

And when she leaves, across the hall, her eyes meet with a girl that she once held in her arms to help a stranger.

/

Things click into place slower than she’d have preferred, but after much thought, Irene knows what it is that’s gone wrong — she knows why it is that her people keep dying, why they’re falling like flies faster than she ever could put people into the ground.

The time has come, and there is no more time to waste. 

/

She doesn’t go to Jessica Daniels’ funeral, though a part of her thinks that maybe she should have.

Irene knows that the girl and Owen were close, and that if anyone would have made her sweet boy happy, it would have been her.

But Irene knows that, for all that she did not have a direct hand in causing the girl’s death, it is still partially her fault. 

Jessica was not her father, Irene thinks. The girl did not deserve to suffer for the things that Warren had coming to him.

/

The bastard takes Owen.

Though Irene cannot say she’s surprised, there is a heavy weight on her shoulders when she receives the call. 

A part of her had hoped, foolishly, that her poor son would not have to be in the middle of this confrontation when it finally occurred. 

She should have known better.

/

Irene doesn’t know why she leaves Iris that message.

Is she truly not sorry? The truth is more complicated than that.

She is, and she isn’t.

She would not take back the things she’s done, the people she’s had to hurt to get here, and yet when she looks back she cannot help but pity  _ herself  _ for the choices she made.

For Elena.

It is all, ultimately, for Elena.

/

_ “I knew a girl once,” _ Irene tells Daniels.

She cannot bear to look at Owen as she stands in the middle of the courtroom, speaking her part.

Irene does not tell her story for Daniels, and she doesn’t entirely tell the story for Addison either.

For all of the times that she had to lie to Owen, for all of the moments that the truth was just out of reach for the both of them.

She thinks of motherhood, and she thinks of the child she carried in her arms for hours in the nights that the weeping boy could not sleep — the way his hair stuck out on the crown of his head when she ran her fingers through it to tease him, and how he’d never stopped coming into her room and curling up with her when he couldn’t sleep because of nightmares.

She thinks of friendship; blonde hair and the way Elena’s fingers felt running through her hair as she wove flowers into each strand, the way they’d sit in the grass and laugh until neither of them could form a coherent sentence. Strings tied between two friends who should have been able to stand together through anything.

And then, she does not think of anything.

/

“Was it worth it?” Someone asks again, when life is behind her and the afterlife awaits.

_ It was, and it wasn’t, _ she doesn’t say.


End file.
